Monday, July 28, 2008

The MASSIVE POLL story has sprouted little legs and is starting to run around AM talk radio. Buckets has postedclips from Thursday night's John Counsell radio show on CFRA 580 in Ottawa, and it's getting ugly. Counsell, who describes himself as a "passionate supporter" of Campaign Life Coalition, questioned not only KLRVU, but the poll itself. Via buckets, the money quotes from Counsell:

"Why even do a poll and publish the stats if the polling company is questionable? It does more damage than good. And [I am] a supporter of campaign Life Coalition!"

and

"Campaign Life Coalition has to do some damage control in telling people who KLRVU is, what other polls they've done in the past. … The stats mean nothing if this is not a legitimate polling company."

Yeeeowtch!!!The second quote was from a discussion Counsell was having with "Wanda", a representative of CLC. There were a couple of interesting things in that convo -- among them Counsell's assertion that the credibilty of CLC, KLRVU and their poll are "taking a beating" and "getting creamed" on the internet because of their inability to prove the legitimacy of KLRVU, and by proxy, their poll. "The left-wing pro-abortion blogs are carving up Campaign Life because of what looks like a bogus polling company!" says Counsell. (Heh.)And how did Wanda respond? Like any good little propagandist: "150,000 households were polled..." yada yada yada. Counsell interrupted her to say "The stats mean nothing if it's not a legitimate polling company!" But that didn't stop Wanda from bringing it up again a few seconds later: "150,000 households..." only to be interrupted and brought back to reality again. Listen to the clip -- Wanda is quite instructive in demonstrating the kind of mentality we're dealing with from these people. Just keep repeating the propaganda, over and over and over and over and... Something else: In the first clip, Counsell tells his audience the question that was asked in the poll, with one subtle difference -- he stumbles over the word "abortionist", and instead says "Doctor Henry Morgentaler". Maybe he recognizes that the wording of the question itself undermines the poll's credibilty?Anyway, the upshot of it was that "Wanda" was supposed to "make some phone calls" to CLC on Friday morning... and I'm sure she did, just as I'm equally sure we'll never know what transpired during those calls. ("Dive! Dive! Dive!") I want the CLC's honchos to either prove the poll is legit by providing its backup data, or issue a very public mea culpa and admission that the poll is meaningless. I think we've more than established that the appropriate response to the queston of the poll's credibility isn't "Because KLRVU said so". We're listening, CLC... and remember: the truth shall set you free.